Overview

Adding Members

Invite Members

The Things Network community is built up of people. Extend your community by inviting them to become members.

As a community, you can reach out to people who you think might be interested in The Things Network by inviting them to become members. The current existing members too can invite people to join the community. The invitees receive an email inviting them to join the community, and they can then choose whether to accept or reject the invitation.

In addition to receiving an email invitation, invitees can go tag other people on social media by sharing the message. If you invite someone to join the community, they will need to have an account first with The Things Network.

Make sure there is enough diversity within your team. A community consists of designers, developers, engineers, businesspeople etc. Find your group of at least 8 people who are passionate about creating the network and developing innovative applications.

Gateways

We are making great efforts to support all available LoRaWAN-enabled network equipment. We currently support the following gateways:

Multitech

Kerlink

Lorank 8

Lorrier LR1/2

Link Labs LL-BS-8

ExpEmb

Gemtek

Build your own Gateway (Raspberry Pi + IMST IC880a

The Things Gateway

The price range for each of these devices is around $300 -$1500. Our goal is to make the network architecture as decentralized as possible and avoid any points of failure or control. While we continue working to achieve our goals you can help build the network in many ways, for example by placing a gateway.You can contact our team and we can help you out in getting a gateway and connecting to The Things Network.

If you already have these devices, then head over to the 'LEARN' section and check out the official documentation for configuring the gateway. Also in case your device is not listed there you can contact our team and we will get in touch with you.

Exposure

Exposure

Why not start with writing a post about the activities and plans for the community. It is a great way to gain exposure and traction while getting started. You can see the posts from all around the community here:

The Things Network has an active forum space that allows people to discuss anything related to the network. it is is a great place to find other contributors and start discussing the setup of a community. You can create a post under the category: Campaigns: "Looking for a team? to let your presence known and find people who would be interested in contributing.

Communication Channel

Internal Communication

An engaged community feels valued involved and that they genuinely matter. Effective communications ensure that members fully understand The Things Network, its values and mission goals to fully engage with their own roles.

But how can a community have great internal communication? Good internal communication consists of…

Open and objective communication

Consistent and regular communication

Two-way dialogue

An accessible medium.

We highly recommend you to create a Slack group. It is a free messaging app that helps organizing your team conversation and allows you to directly reach out to members.

You can also use other ways of communication, as long as you make sure people have easy access to join the conversation. Our Global Slack channel has over 1000+ members and has discussions happening on several topics including support, hardware, backend and other general related subjects.

Celebrate

Last and most important above all is to celebrate success. Once you have got everything up and running in your city it is time to organize a event and share this other people. Let us know and we will share the word around.

At The Things Network we take huge pride in celebrating milestones and would love to hear exciting updates from your side. In case you need some ideas drop us a tweet @thethingsntwrk